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Updated: May 3, 2025
And Steffan, Gertrude and their little Dieterli lived simple, useful and contented lives and were a good example to all the neighborhood. Now, to-day, Gertrude stood weeping by the window and looked across to the church-yard, where that very morning they had laid her good man.
Her thoughts went back to the days when her little Dieterli loved good and orderly conduct; it could not be that he had lost his love for it, that he did not still feel that in the right conduct of life lies inward and outward blessing. She recalled the evening of the day when her husband was borne from the house to his burial.
"Oh, Dieterli, my son, you are wandering away, but you know the way home," she said to herself, and she folded her hands in prayer, for her habit was to lay all her troubles before God, her Supporter and Comforter. At this moment, she heard through the stillness loud shouts and cries, first at a distance, then nearer and nearer, until they grew into a wild tumult.
She grasped the hand of her sobbing son, which lay upon hers, and held it tightly clasped; while she whispered softly: "Yes, my Dieterli, pray, pray; if you can pray, all will come right again." She closed her eyes and never spoke again. The hand that held Dietrich's grew cold.
Then he sets upon one knee the chubby little Dieterli and on the other the black eyed Veronica, and they ride there as long as they please, no matter how high the horse has to curvet and prance. And whatever else they want him to do for them, he is ready to do, whatever it may be.
She had taken the children by the hand and, stupefied with pain, was about to put them to bed, but Dieterli objected, saying, "No, mother, no; it is not good to go to bed before you say your prayers." Did her boy ever pray now?
These were, the son of the shoemaker, long, bony Jost, with his little, cunning eyes, and the sexton's boy, who was as broad as he was long, and from whose round face two pale eyes peered forth upon the world, in innocently stupid surprise. His name was Blasius, nicknamed Blasi. Often, on the way to school, quarrels arose between Dieterli and the two other boys.
It would occur to one of them to try what Veronica would do if he were to give her a blow with his fist. Scarcely had he opened his attack when he found himself lying on his nose, while Dieterli played a vigorous tattoo on his back with no gentle fists.
Dieterli was not afraid of either of them; for though smaller and thinner than either, he was also much more lithe, and could glide about like a lizard before, behind and all around his adversaries, and slip through their fingers while they were trying to catch him. Veronica was well avenged, and went on the rest of her way without fear of molestation.
Many a time had she read over the motto which shone out so mysteriously from the breast of the opened rose. To-day she was poring over it again, and her absorption in "that same old rose," as Dieterli called it, had so annoyed the lively lad that he left her, and had gone out into the kitchen to find his mother.
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